little excursions, which I made by themselves.

Passing Bow Bridge, where the county of Essex begins, the first
observation I made was, that all the villages which may be called
the neighbourhood of the city of London on this, as well as on the
other sides thereof, which I shall speak to in their order; I say,
all those villages are increased in buildings to a strange degree,
within the compass of about twenty or thirty years past at the
most.

The village of Stratford, the first in this county from London, is
not only increased, but, I believe, more than doubled in that time;
every vacancy filled up with new houses, and two little towns or
hamlets, as they may be called, on the forest side of the town
entirely new, namely Maryland Point and the Gravel Pits, one facing
the road to Woodford and Epping, and the other facing the road to
Ilford; and as for the hither part, it is almost joined to Bow, in
spite of rivers, canals, marshy grounds, &c. Nor is this increase
of building the case only in this and all the other villages round
London; but the increase of the value and rent of the houses
formerly standing has, in that compass of years above-mentioned,
advanced to a very great degree, and I may venture to say at least
the fifth part; some think a third part, above what they were
before.

This is indeed most visible, speaking of Stratford in Essex; but it
is the same thing in proportion in other villages adjacent,
especially on the forest side; as at Low Leyton, Leytonstone,
Walthamstow, Woodford, Wanstead, and the towns of West Ham,
Plaistow, Upton, etc. In all which places, or near them (as the